So lets build some Quantum bombs.
Posted on 11/17/2007 2:07:34 PM PST by blam
Deflected asteroids may keep coming back
17 November 2007
What goes around comes around. Unfortunately, no such karma figures in plans to deflect asteroids on a collision course with Earth, a hearing of the US House Science and Technology Committee was told last week. One big whack will deflect an asteroid temporarily, but does not guarantee safety next time its orbit brings it close.
Asteroid researchers have long debated the merits of deflecting asteroids with a powerful blast such as a nuclear explosion. However, Rusty Schweickart, who heads an asteroid research group called the B612 Foundation, told the committee that the effects of powerful blasts are hard to predict, especially if Earth's gravitational pull acts on the object. An asteroid could pass through one of the "keyholes" that would nudge it back onto a collision course, so once diverted it might need to be steered past Earth to prevent this.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Well, sure - we can get it done if we get the guvment out of the way! 8<)
Yes.
True: impact is required. Buried is best, but an impact far enough out may be “good enough”
More properly, that is an example of a steroidas, not an asteroid. 8<)
You forget about the ether! Kinda goes with global warming, dontcha think?
Now the only question is: global warming or asteroid?
The new "boxers or briefs" question.
That would be precision work placing the motor on the body so that the trust is in line with the axis of rotation. Some of those bodies turn vary slowly and would require some good senors and computers to determine the axis of rotation. Still, it is doable.
So lets build some Quantum bombs.
Ya know, the Air Farce tried to build some quantum bombs once.
Had to give it up though.
They never could get the right inventory from the malefactor and weapons depot: 0, 1, 2, 4, no - 2, wait, it’s now 5, no - hold on: now there are12.” “Well sir, we loaded only 2 but they took off with 4 and crashed when 6 showed up.”
Apparently deflected Clinton's do the same thing.
Your right, this requires some explnation.
Ok, down and dirty, You know a little bit about how a microwave oven works? Radiation excites the molcules and such, producing heat due to the friction of moving atoms.
Photons, (AKA light, laser, radio waves) contain energy, when they hit the electrons of an atom, the electrons in that atom can absorb (if “colder”) this extra energy. (BTW hot atoms spew energy out in the same form). Atoms bump against one another to try to establish equillibrium (also called Null, to spread this extra energy evenly), remember these atoms are in motion (think of billiard balls, hit the rack lightly with the cue ball, the other balls would tend to seperate, but there are other forces at work, the molecules within any rock or other solid object are bound together by specific Physical laws of combination and/or association)
Ok, now, our asteroid only needs to be steerd off by a fraction of a degree. so if we can excite the molecules on the side of an asteriod (the side we wish to push on) it will actually.. push it into that direction. It’s because of the fact that we can affect change in the energy state of the the molecules on the side we “push” on, that it works.
These changes on our “push” side will be absorbed by the rest of the asteroid as a whole. Now in our microwave oven, we cant see it, but in zero G space and powerfull nukes at exactly the right distance and position, the path of any interstellar object can changed.
I hope I did’nt confuse you more
All that it gonna take is a one time nudge, if caught early enough, even a modest nuke det would pospone the problem for at least a generation (or it’s cycle + proablity of intersection with earth, usually we measure that in eons)
The amount of energy that would be required to “divert” any asteroid into “any” planetary orbit, would be extreemly significant, and undooable. so the question goes, Can we survive as a species if we know one is heading our way?
My answer, we have the knowledge, yes, but, I for one wouldn’t trust the gov’t to actually give a rats a$$ about any of us. But I digress, if one of them there asteroids hits earth, it will be moot. Nothing will survive. It dosen’t need to be the size of Texas either, if it’s solid enough(mass) and zoomin fast enough (speed), it can be the size of a city block, which incedentally no observatory would be likely to detect. Within the cosmological context the physical earth is fragile.
I think it's more that the thrust is mass[ively] small, but sustained.
With no friction, and little gravity, to overcome, it adds up over a time.
Correct. I meant that it takes longer for the thrust to have an effect on the body.
I am Kirok!
Either the ether or neither.....:)
I was going to say...since there is an extraction and storage process for anti-matter, its all a matter of developing a process of doing it cheaply and in mass quantities enough to blow these asteroids into smithereens!
I’ve read that a few grams would take out a large city block!
If global warming is eventually going to kill us all, according to AlGore, then this whole argument is a mut point. Any asteroid big enough to hit Earth and destroy everything will be hitting a planet of the dead. There will be no one around to have to worry about being wiped out.
mut = mute. It’s late for me tonight.
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